“Is that so?” He closes his book and crosses his arms, looking at me from behind his dark sunglasses. “We’ve only been married a day and you’re already writing about another man? Cruel woman.”
“I am not writing about a man.”
“Is it a journal entry?”
I wish I hadn’t brought my notebook and pen to the pool. “It’s nothing.”
He frowns. “It’s something.”
“I thought . . .” I look at the last sentence scrawled across the page. “I am going to try to write a novel.”
“Non.”
“No?”
He removes his sunglasses and stares deep into my eyes, so deep I think he can see all of the secrets written on the pages of my heart.
“You’re not going to try to write a novel. Trying is passive, it is yielding to the possibility of failure before you have even begun. You will write a novel.”
Now I know how Xavier was able to dramatically increase his company’s earnings in less than ten years. His fortitude is as powerful as his physique.
“I will write a novel.”
“Bon. That’s better.” He smiles, slipping his glasses back on. “Can I read it?”
“It’s not worth reading. It’s nothing.”
He holds his hand out. I consider lying. Oh, these scribbles? They’re my to-do list.” I consider tossing the notebook into the lake, letting it sink to the bottom to feed the fish. Instead, I hand him the notebook and study his profile as he reads the entry. He looks over at me and back at the notebook, reading the entry a second time.
“It’s good, Manderley.”
“Really?”
“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it,” he says, handing me the notebook. “It’s an intriguing beginning. I want to know more about the house on the strand and the secrets hidden in her cellars.”
“Thank you.” My heart swells with his praise.
“De rien.” He looks over his shoulder, smiling. “Tell me, are the secrets of a romantic nature? Is this to be a tale of forbidden love, full of heaving bosoms and ripped bodices?”
I frown. “Why would you assume it’s going to be a romance novel?”
“I am French, mon amour. Romance is our lifeblood, running through our veins, at the heart of every great story we have ever told, the motivation of our greatest feats.”
“I would like to hear a few of your stories,” I say, closing my journal and staring at my toenails, the pool sparkling beyond my feet. “Tell me about your romances.”
He laughs and the sound disturbs a swan waddling on the lawn nearby. The bird hisses.
“Those are stories better left unwritten, ma bichette.” He chuckles, but the sound is less natural. “Besides, you are clearly the writer of the family and your story sounds far more interesting. Are you sure it isn’t going to be a romance?”
“Positive.”
“What’s the secret then?”
“Murder.”
“Murder?” He sits up and takes his glasses off again, fixing me with a curious stare. “Who was murdered?”
“The wife of the man who owns the house on the strand.”
The words come out of my mouth without thought, as if something deeper and darker is compelling me to speak. Xavier pushes his sunglasses back on his face and stares out at the lake. I feel colder, bereft, as if the sun has moved behind the clouds. I hug the notebook to my chest.
“Why?”
“Why?” I repeat.
“Why did he murder his wife? What was his motivation?”
“Is there ever a good motive for murder?”
“Oui. Occasionally.”
I glance at his profile, notice the muscle working frantically along his jaw, and an uneasiness comes over me, a feverish, queasy, sick feeling. I assume Xavier was talking about motives for a fictional murder. Wasn’t he? Change the subject, Manderley. Ask him about sailing, about his home in Brittany, about that little book of poetry. . .
“Betrayal,” he says in a cold, flat tone. “There’s a powerful motive for murder. Betrayal can drive a man mad with rage, make him do things he would not normally consider. The deeper he loves the person who treated his trust so capriciously, the more insane their betrayal makes him.”
Something tells me Xavier is not speaking theoretically when he speaks about the rage of betrayal. Did Marine betray him and did his love for her drive him to the point of madness? I want to ask him. I should be able to ask him—after all, we are husband and wife, bound together for all eternity—but I am afraid to hear his answer. My confidence in Xavier’s love for me is still so fragile, as paper-thin as the tissue that was in my Dior gift bag, that I am afraid to test it.
I lift the hem of my cover-up and stick my finger through a hole in the eyelet lace. How much easier would my life be if I had the courage to say what I was thinking and to ask the questions fear keeps me from asking? Instead, I am tortured by the unknown, haunted by the what-ifs.
“Stop fidgeting,” he says, reaching over and pulling my finger free from the hole. “Do I make you that nervous? I am sorry. I am afraid I can be sullen, sometimes.”
Whatever clouds skittered across his mental sky must have skittered away again because he doesn’t appear sullen or distracted. My smiling, attentive husband has returned.
“You don’t make me nervous,” I lie.
He looks skeptical, but doesn’t argue. “Are you going to finish your novel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Finish it, Manderley. Always finish what you begin, even if the journey is not a pleasant one and you end up somewhere you never expected to be.” He squeezes my hand. “Believe in yourself to see it all the way through. I know you can do it.”
“Thank you.”
“De rien.” He grabs the sunscreen lotion off the table and stands, towering over me, his broad shoulders blocking the sun. “You’re starting to burn. Roll over. I will rub lotion on your back.”
I shrug out of my cover-up and roll onto my stomach. Xavier sits on the edge of my lounger. His thigh presses against my side and a frisson of desire passes through my body. Will it always be this way, I wonder? Will my body always react to his slightest touch?
He moves my hair to the side, exposing my back and part of my neck, squirts lotion onto his hand, and rubs it into my skin with his fingertips. Slow, firm circles moving down my spine, working the tension from my muscles. I close my eyes and feel myself drifting to the warm, happy place between awake and sleep.
“Tomorrow is our last day here,” he says, leaning down to kiss my shoulder. “I have something special planned.”
“Mmm.”
“Do you want to know what it is?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I rented a boat. We are going sailing.”
“Sailing?”
I scoot up, wide-awake now.
“Oui. Is there a problem?”
Xavier grew up near the sea. He was in the French navy. He is the president of a major boat-building corporation. I don’t want to disappoint him, so I swallow the bile rising up my throat, and blink back the tears.
“No, no problem at all.” But it is a problem. A big problem.
Chapter Twenty-eight
We are preparing for bed when Xavier drops a slender volume onto his nightstand—the same slender volume he brought to the pool. The cover is worn blue leather and the title, Poems for Seafarers, is embossed upon it in swirling silver letters. The swirly letters reflect the lamplight like a lighthouse beacon, beckoning me closer or warning me of impending disaster, I don’t know which.
When Xavier steps back into the bathroom, I lift the book of poetry in my hands, holding it as if it might suddenly turn to dust and blow away. I open to the middle and find a poem by Lord Tennyson; the yellowing page is dog-eared and the type smeared from someone—presumably Xavier—running his finger over the words.
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue co
uld utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
Oh Tennyson! What kindred souls are we? Would that my tongue could utter the thoughts bothering me. Would that I could tell Xavier the truth: that I don’t ever want to step foot on a boat of any kind—sailboat, speedboat, ocean liner, or kayak.
At the bottom of the page, someone has put a small mark, this in pencil, beside the poem’s final stanza.
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
Such a melancholic poem, so full of nostalgia for what was loved and lost. I read the lines again and it becomes clear Tennyson was writing about the loss of a lover or dear friend. Sixteen lines of carefully chosen words to convey a deep sense of mourning.
I touch my finger to the yellowing page, trace the faint pencil mark beside the last stanza, and wonder what Xavier had been thinking when he highlighted “Break, Break, Break.” Who had he been mourning?
Marine.
I hear the name whispered in my head and quickly turn the page. I close the book and open to the frontispiece, an engraving of a ship being swallowed by a dark, stormy sea. Moonlight illuminates the ship and the wave it rides upon—the last ray of light before eternal darkness. My attention is held not by the haunting scene, but by the inscription, written in elegant, loopy penmanship on the title page.
To Xavier,
My most beloved seafarer.
Love Always,
Your darling,
Marine
A maggot of doubt begins wriggling into my heart, spoiling the sweet, unsullied trust I’ve had for Xavier. He does not love me. I am but a placeholder for the one he lost. He still loves Marine. Why else would he carry a maudlin book of poems given to him by his darling Marine?
I close the book again and put it back on the nightstand, but I can still see the words my most beloved and the large, looping M of Marine’s signature seared on the back of my eyes.
I press my hands to my face, pushing my fingertips against my eyelids as if the act will blot Xavier’s first wife from my mind, from his heart. I don’t want to think about her, to wonder why she gave Xavier a book of poems written in English. Did they have English terms of endearment for each other? Did they dream of one day moving to England or America, retiring to a quaint fishing village in Cornwall or Massachusetts? Did she read to him from Poems for Seafarers? Did they lie in bed, Marine stroking his head, running her slender, manicured fingers through his hair as she murmured the words of Whitman or Dunbar?
Xavier emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of soap and citrus-scented steam, his hair damp from the shower he takes before bed, his chest bare, a towel wrapped around his waist.
He stops to press a kiss to my forehead before circling around to his side of the bed. I grab my iPhone and pad into the bathroom. As soon as I have closed and locked the door, I slide to the tile floor and push my phone’s home button, as if possessed by the spirit of another woman, a jealous, insecure woman.
Marine de Maloret.
I type the name into the search bar and hold my breath as I wait for the returns. The first hit is an article from a French language newspaper out of Quimper. I click on it and a bold, black headline appears—La bataille la plus âpre de l’Europe se poursuit—followed by a photograph of an unsmiling, tuxedo-clad Xavier standing beside a striking brunette in a sleek black cocktail gown, her hand resting casually, but proprietarily, on Xavier’s forearm. They are standing on a neatly clipped lawn, a towering gray stone château in the background. The caption beneath the photo is in French, but the names Monsieur et Madame Xavier de Maloret need no translation.
I enlarge the photo and stare at the woman standing beside my husband, the creature who has been a ghostly presence these last few weeks, sensed, not seen, and immediately regret using the power of the internet to exorcise her. Striking might not be a potent enough word to describe Marine. She is everything I am not—confident, stylish, gorgeous, at ease with her beautiful, lithe body. If I were in Monte Carlo, I would wager a small fortune Marine moves with the singular grace that seems the divinely bespoke trait of tall, slender women. All of the evidence is here—in this single photograph—the tilt of her chin, the posture subtly emphasizing her long, lean legs, the serene smile. How can I ever hope to compete with the memory of Marine?
The lights are off and the drapes closed when I finally return to the bedroom. Xavier lifts the blankets and I climb into bed beside him.
“I thought you would never be finished in there,” he says, pulling me against his hard, naked body. “It feels like an eternity since I did this”—he kisses my lips—“and this.” He takes my bottom lip into his mouth, nibbling and sucking on the plump flesh, while his knee spreads my thighs.
“Xavier?” I gasp.
“Oui, mon amour?”
“What are you doing?”
He chuckles low in his throat, the sound seductive in the night-darkened room, with his chest pressed against my breasts. “I am going to make love to you.”
And he does. Slow and hot, groaning as he holds me tight around the waist and eases his body into mine. He is maddeningly restrained in his lovemaking, patiently stoking the flames of my desire until I clutch his waist and push him deep inside me, deep into my womb, silently urging him to increase his tempo.
“Mon Dieu. Tu me rends fou.”
Beads of perspiration drop on the pillow beside my head, echoing in my ears like spring rain pattering on a tin roof. Still, Xavier keeps his rhythm slow and achingly gentle.
“Tu es à moi, Manderley.”
Mon-de-lee.
Hearing him pronounce my name the way only he does, with his heavy French accent, so that it sounds like a sensual moan uttered by a lover in the throes of desire, touches a raw place in my heart and I begin to cry. Hot, silent tears slipping out of my eyes and down onto the pillow to mingle with his beads of perspiration. I weep for what I have and what I fear is not mine to hold.
Chapter Twenty-nine
I am walking down a gravel driveway lined with tall plane trees, their trunks mottled with gray, green, white, and yellow bark. Golden rays of sunlight penetrate the thick canopy of waxy leaves, creating lacy shadows on the ground.
I pause in a beam of light so I can feel the warmth of the sun on my face. I feel nothing. Not the warmth on my cheeks nor the breeze ruffling my hair.
In the distance, I hear the surf crashing against the rocky shore. I lick my lips, hoping to taste the salty tang of sea air. I taste nothing.
I continue walking, suddenly anxious to reach the end of the drive. A strong gust of wind blows through the branches and rattles the leaves so that it sounds as if they are whispering to me—a welcome or a warning, I cannot tell.
Suddenly, the wind plucks the trees from the ground in a great shedding and swirling of waxy leaves. The trees spin around in the sky, roots dangling, bare branches grasping the air like skeletal hands. Through the maelstrom of leaves and branches, I recognize Xavier’s home at the end of the drive just ahead.
“Xavier!” I cry, running toward the château. “Xavier.”
The silhouette of a person suddenly appears in one of the windows—its features too indistinguishable to determine if it is a man or a woman—and my pulse quickens in terror.
I run across the courtyard and up the stairs, into a grand foyer aglow with the light of a thousand slender candles in a tinkling crystal chandelier.
For a second, I wonder if my simple cotton sundress is too plain for such magnificent surroundings, too plain for a man as magnificent as Xavier, but the anxiety passes quickly, as soon as I notice the trail of oleander blossoms leading from the front door and up the stone staircase.
“Xavier?”
He appears at the top of the stairs, looks down, and notices me standing in the foyer. He hurries down the stairs, happy, no, relieved, to see me.
I turn to check my appea
rance in the cloudy baroque mirror hanging near the door, but it is not my image I see reflected in the glass. It is Marine, dressed in a billowy black gown, her glossy black hair floating around her shoulders—my shoulders—as if weightless.
“Marine, darling,” he says, reaching for me. “I thought you would never arrive. I’ve missed you.”
I try to pull away, but I can’t move my feet. I look down and see the gnarled, earth-encrusted roots of a plane tree wrapped around my ankles.
“Marine, what is it, darling?”
I am not Marine!
I try to speak the words, but my mouth appears to be frozen in a grotesque smile. I look in the mirror again, at my pale, almost lifeless skin, my lips tinged blue like the corpse of a drowning victim, and Xavier standing behind me, his eyes as deep and dark as the sea crashing on the rocks nearby.
He leans forward, as if to kiss me, and I am falling, falling into his eyes, splashing into a black, stormy sea, icy waves washing over my head, pushing me down, down, down . . .
“Xavier!” I cry, reaching my hand out for him. “Xavier, please. Save me.”
* * *
“Wake up, ma bichette.” Xavier’s strong arms are around me, his warm breath on my shoulder, scented with cinnamon. “Wake up.”
“I am drowning,” I gasp, my chest tight.
“Shhh,” he soothes, folding me into him. “You aren’t drowning, ma bichette. You are safe. It was only a nightmare.”
My limbs are trembling and my skin feels cold, so very cold. The memory of the dream is still powerfully present, lingering in such a way as to make me question whether I am truly awake or lost in another, sweeter nocturnal fantasy. I wrap my arms around Xavier’s neck, bury my head against his shoulder, and cling to him so the icy waves can’t drag me to the depths of the ocean.
He holds me against his chest, murmuring words in French I don’t understand, until my tears stop falling and my trembling limbs relax.
“You are safe, ma bichette. I promise,” he whispers in my ear, his lips brushing my lobe. “Now, won’t you tell me what that was all about? What did you dream about that made you cry out for me in your sleep?”
Dreaming of Manderley Page 20